Analyzing a Subject

When you analyze a subject, you divide it into its parts and then examine one part at a time. If you have taken any chemistry, you probably analyzed water: you separated it into hydrogen and oxygen, its two elements. You’ve heard many a commentator or blogger analyze the news, telling us what made up an event—who participated, where it occurred, what happened. Analyzing a news event may produce results less certain and clear-cut than analyzing a chemical compound, but the principle is similar—to take something apart for the purpose of understanding it better.

For more on division and classification, see Dividing and Classifying. For more on process analysis, see Analyzing a Process. For more on cause and effect, see Identifying Causes and Effects.

Analysis helps readers grasp something complex: they can more readily take it in as a series of bites than one gulp. For this reason, college textbooks do a lot of analyzing: an economics book divides a labor union into its component parts, an anatomy text divides the hand into its bones, muscles, and ligaments. In your papers, you might analyze and explain to readers anything from a contemporary subculture (What social groups make up the homeless population of Los Angeles?) to an ecosystem (What animals, plants, and minerals coexist in a rain forest?). Analysis is so useful that you can apply it in many situations: breaking down the components of a subject to classify them, separating the stages in a process to see how it works, or identifying the possible results of an event to project consequences.

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In Cultural Anthropology: A Perspective on the Human Condition (West, 1987), Emily A. Schultz and Robert H. Lavenda briefly but effectively demonstrate by analysis how a metaphor like “the Lord is my shepherd” makes a difficult concept (“the Lord”) easy to understand.

The first part of a metaphor, the metaphorical subject, indicates the domain of experience that needs to be clarified (e.g., “the Lord”). The second part of a metaphor, the metaphorical predicate, suggests a domain of experience which is familiar (e.g., sheep-herding) and which may help us understand what “the Lord” is all about.

When you plan an analysis, you might label slices in a pielike circle or arrange subdivisions in a list running from smallest to largest or least to most important. Make sure your analysis has a purpose—that it will show something about your subject or tell your readers something they didn’t know before. For example, to show the ethnic composition of New York City, you might divide the city geographically into neighborhoods—Harlem, Spanish Harlem, Yorkville, Chinatown, Little Italy. To explain New York’s social classes, however, you might start with homeless people and work up to the wealthy elite. The way you slice your subject into pieces depends in part on the point you want to make about it—and the point you end up making depends in part on how you’ve sliced it up. You may also find that you have a stronger point to make—that New York City’s social hierarchy is oppressive and unstable, for example.

For more on transitions, see Adding Cues and Connections in Ch. 21.

How can you help readers follow your analysis? Some writers begin by identifying the subdivisions into which they will slice the subject (“The federal government has three branches”). If you name or label each part you mention, define your terms, and clarify with examples, you will also distinguish each part from the others. Finally, transitions, leading readers from one part to the next, help make your essay readable.

DISCOVERY CHECKLIST

  • Exactly what will you try to achieve in your analysis?

  • How does your analysis support your main idea or thesis?

  • How will you break your subject into parts?

  • How can you make each part clear to your readers?

  • What definitions, details, and examples would help clarify each part?

  • What transitions would clarify your movement from part to part?

Learning by Doing Analyzing a Subject

Learning by Doingimage Analyzing a Subject

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Analyze one of the following subjects by making a list of its basic parts or elements. Then use your list as the basis for a paragraph or short essay explaining each part. Be sure to identify the purpose or point of your analysis. Compare your analysis with those of others in your class who chose the same subject.

a news source a song, album, or musical group
parking social media
a reality TV show a computer or other technological device
a good teacher or course a family, tribe, clan, or neighborhood
a healthy lifestyle leadership, heroism, or service